Final Exit Network is the only national organization that publicly offers education, support, and a compassionate presence to our members. We provide exit guides throughout the U.S. to those who meet our Medical Committee requirements.

Through the defense of our Exit Guides, we have made significant changes to laws in states where our right to provide services has been challenged. As the U.S. host of the 20th international biennial conference, our support of the World Federation of Right to Die Society's Conference in September 2014 in Chicago highlighted the importance of this significant WORLD movement.

Many of our members join to promote the right to death with dignity. Others join to support our exit guide volunteers, or to help pay for legal protection for our exit guides.

It is our hope that one day, the right to death-with-dignity will be far more than a phrase, but a right that each one of us may choose to exercise at the end of our lives and, if necessary, at a time of our own choosing.

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FEN General Counsel Robert Rivas reports on the trial in Hastings, MN.

nonprofit world news list in digest form [right-to-die@lists.opn.org].

Photos this page courtesy of Faye Girsh / ERGO.

Thursday, May 14: Final Exit Network found guilty on two charges.

Minnesota Case: Final Exit Network Found Guilty

Of a Crime For Showing Compassion

By Rob Rivas, General Counsel Final Exit Network

HASTINGS, Minnesota, May 14 — A 12-member jury found Final Exit Network, Inc. guilty of “assisting” in a “suicide” and interfering with the scene of a death so as to “mislead” the coroner.

A five-woman, seven-man jury deliberated for only about half an hour at the end of the day on Wednesday, May 13, then another hour in the morning the next day before rendering its unanimous verdict, finding the not-for-profit corporation guilty on both of the counts against it.

Judge Christian Wilton set the sentencing hearing to take place at 9 a.m. on August 24. The “assisting” in a “suicide” count, a felony, carries with it a potential fine of $30,000, while the charge of interfering “with the body or scene of death with intent to mislead the coroner or conceal evidence,” a “gross” misdemeanor, is punishable by a fine of up to $3,000.

Thus, since a corporation cannot be incarcerated, and no Final Exit Network board members or volunteers face any potential sanctions, the maximum possible punishment is a fine of $33,000.

The State’s case consisted of proof that the Network’s volunteers provided information, education, and emotional support to Doreen Dunn, 57, of Apple Valley, in her self-deliverance on May 30, 2007.

“The State’s entire case proceeded on the theory that Final Exit Network could be convicted solely for exercising its First Amendment-protected right to freedom of speech,” said the Network’s attorney, Robert Rivas. “And the judge instructed the jurors that they could convict the Network with no evidence of actual assisting, but only of speech.”

The Network immediately initiated plans to appeal to the Court of Appeals of Minnesota, the first step in the ladder of appeals from a conviction in the District Court of Dakota County.

To those who have followed the Network’s battle with the State of Minnesota since it began in 2012, the infringement of free speech rights that unfolded at the trial this week would seem completely implausible and inexplicable. Here’s how it happened.

The Minnesota statute prohibiting assistance in a “suicide” prohibits not only “assisting,” but also “advising” or “encouraging” a suicide. The State originally indicted the Network with plans, as openly stated, to try to convict the Network of “advising” or “encouraging” a suicide, since the State had no evidence of “assisting.”

The Network moved to dismiss the indictment to the extent it relied on “advising” or “encouraging” a suicide, saying these two provisions violated the First Amendment-protected right of free speech. All the while the Network acknowledged that the State could theoretically convict a defendant of “assisting” in a “suicide” if it could prove actual physical assistance.

The trial court judge, Karen Asphaug, agreed with the Network and ordered that the State’s case could proceed only on the “assisting” language of that statute, holding the “advise” and “encourage” clauses unconstitutional. The State appealed to the intermediate Court of Appeals of Minnesota.

In 2013, the Court of Appeals, in resounding terms, agreed with the Network and Judge Asphaug and held the Minnesota statute unconstitutional under the First Amendment to the extent it prohibited “advising” and “encouraging” a “suicide.” Final Exit Network’s leadership thought they had struck a decisive blow for the First Amendment and thought the Hastings prosecution could not go forward based on pure speech, and might not be able to go forward at all.

In the meantime, the Supreme Court of Minnesota was considering the appeal of William Francis Melchert-Dinklel, a middle-aged registered nurse who, as a hobby, trolled the Internet, sought out suicidal young people, pretended to be a suicidal teenager himself, and tried to talk his victims into hanging themselves in a double suicide pact. His only apparent motivation was to watch people die via a Skype hookup. He was charged under the same statute as Final Exit Network — the law against “advising, encouraging, or assisting” in a “suicide.”

In its Melchert-Dinkel decision, the Supreme Court — consistent with the Court of Appeals’ decision in the Final Exit Network case — held that the “advising” and “encouraging” provisions of the Minnesota statute had to be severed from the statute as violative of the First Amendment.

Yet the Melchert-Dinkel precedent contained one paragraph that came back to haunt the Network this week. It said “assisting” in a “suicide” could be accomplished by “speech” if the speech “enabled” a suicide. Thus, having said a state law could not constitutionally prohibit “advising” or “encouraging” a “suicide,” the Supreme Court of Minnesota decreed that the courts themselves could prohibit “advising” or “encouraging” a “suicide” by their interpretation of the meaning of the word “assisting.”

In Hastings, Judge Wilton’s instructions to the jury said the jury could convict the Network of “assisting” in a suicide by “speech” if the speech “enabled” a suicide. In other words, speech on how to commit “suicide” would now be punishable as the felony of “assisting” in a “suicide.”

The final trap was sprung on the Network the day before the trial began, when the State filed a motion to amend the indictment. Where the indictment alleged that the crime took place on May 30, 2007, the day of Ms. Dunn’s self-deliverance, the proposed amendment expanded the date range for the commission of the crime to span from February 1, 2007 to May 30, 2007. By this sleight-of-hand the State swept all the communications between the Network and Ms. Dunn, from the day she applied for Exit Guide services through the date of her death, into the period of time during which the crime was allegedly committed.

Astoundingly, the judge granted the State’s motion to amend the indictment the day before the trial began.

Between the expanded definition of “assisting” in a suicide, and the expanded date range for the crime, the State was allowed to contend that all of the activities that Final Exit Network performs in connection with Exit Guide services — all of the information, education, and support services routinely provided by Final Exit Network — together constituted a crime. The State was allowed to argue, and put on all its evidence in support of the argument, that the Network provided Ms. Dunn a “blueprint to kill herself,” and thereby “enabled” her to commit suicide, which constitutes “assisting” in a “suicide.”

The State’s successful prosecution in Minnesota sets a precedent that threatens the core of Final Exit Network’s Exit Guide program. Under the Minnesota precedent, any state with a law prohibiting “assisting” in a “suicide” could apply the Minnesota definition to the word “assisting.”

Minnesota did not protect free speech rights by its appellate rulings in 2013. Minnesota has merely recast the terminology in which free speech rights are violated. Now, any state may infringe on freedom of speech without openly saying so. Even a state that never before had a law prohibiting the “advising” or “encouraging” a “suicide” may now ban “advising” or “encouraging” a suicide by interpreting and redefining the word “assisting” to include the concepts of “advising” or “encouraging.”

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT! We were gratified to have people in the Minneapolis

area who joined us for the entire trial. Thank you to our members and supporters

who shared this important experience in Final Exit Network history.

The Guardian reported 22 July 2015:

Love and choosing death:

A couple's plea for assisted dying rights -

In January, Steve Goldenberg and his doctor joined a lawsuit against

several district attorneys across New York that aims to legalize aid in

dying -- also called physician-assisted suicide. In April, state district

attorney Eric Schneiderman made a motion to dismiss the suit.

Whether the judge decides to hear arguments, it's unlikely Goldenberg

will survive to see the final outcome.

"If I get to see spring, I'll be lucky," Goldenberg said. If throat

cancer doesn't end his life, complications from diabetes or many

illnesses related to AIDS will, he said. He wants his doctor to

prescribe life-ending medication in case the pain becomes unbearable.

His doctor would like to help but could face manslaughter charges if he

does.

Since December 2014, lawmakers in the District of Columbia and at least

Health Buzz: A Man Came In With a 'DNR' Tattoo. Here's What His Doctors Did

An unconscious patient and his unusual tattoo made for quite the ethical dilemma.

By David Oliver, Associate Editor, Social Media

Doctors from the University of Miami encountered seemingly the ethical dilemma of all ethical dilemmas: A patient with "Do Not Resuscitate" tattooed on his chest, along with what seemed like his signature, arrived at the hospital unconscious and with a high blood alcohol level. Hours later, he developed low blood pressure.

"We initially decided not to honor the tattoo, invoking the principle of not choosing an irreversible path when faced with uncertainty," the doctors wrote to the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine.

The American Association of Suicidology (AAS) recognizes that the practice of physician aid in dying (PAD) is distinct from the behavior that has been traditionally and ordinarily described as “suicide.” Although there may be overlap between the two categories, legal physician assisted deaths should not be considered to be cases of suicide.

Changing the Paradigm of Advance Directives to Avoid Prolonged Dementia

By Norman L. Cantor

With the increasing prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease and similar degenerative dementias, the focus of advance directives has changed for some people. The primary specter is neither an unavoidable looming demise nor the insensate limbo of permanent unconsciousness.